John Morehead Scott

On September 6, 1861, twenty-two-year-old John Morehead Scott enlisted in the Union Army at Findlay, Hancock County, Ohio. Born in Stark County, Ohio, on January 1, 1839, to Thomas B. Scott and Elizabeth Moorehead Scott, he married Rachel M. Davis on September 24, 1861, mere days after his initial enlistment and formal muster on September 19 into Company F of the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry. As with all soldiers serving in the Union Army during the American Civil War, Scott was not assigned an individual military service number; the United States Army did not introduce service serial numbers until February 28, 1918, under War Department General Orders No. 80. Mustered in as a sergeant at Camp Vance, Scott traveled with the regiment to Camp Dennison near Cincinnati to receive arms before advancing across the Ohio River into the rugged Appalachian terrain of eastern Kentucky.

Scott received his first combat seasoning along the Levisa Fork on November 8, 1861, during the Battle of Ivy Mountain. Serving under Brigadier General William "Bull" Nelson, the 21st Ohio engaged Confederate infantry and cavalry commanded by Colonel John S. Williams, dislodging the southern forces from prepared ambuscade positions and forcing their retreat into Virginia. Transferring westward into middle Tennessee by early 1862, the regiment joined the 3rd Division, Army of the Ohio, led by Brigadier General Ormsby M. Mitchel. Mitchel advanced through Murfreesboro toward northern Alabama, intent on seizing Huntsville and severing Confederate rail communications throughout the regional theater.

General Mitchel sanctioned a clandestine, high-risk deep-penetration expedition organized by James J. Andrews, a civilian contraband merchant and Union scout. The mission sought to sever the Western and Atlantic Railroad connecting Atlanta to Chattanooga, preventing the Confederate army from reinforcing Chattanooga while Mitchel marched against the city. Andrews solicited volunteers across the division's Ohio regiments; Scott stepped forward alongside eight fellow soldiers from the 21st Ohio. Discarding their military uniforms for civilian work clothes and concealing sidearms, the raiders slipped through Confederate pickets in small detachments, traveling nearly two hundred miles south through heavy spring rains to reach the rendezvous at Marietta, Georgia.

On the morning of April 12, 1862, twenty raiders boarded a northbound train pulled by the locomotive General. When the train pulled into Big Shanty—present-day Kennesaw, Georgia—the crew and passengers disembarked to take breakfast at the Lacy Hotel. Exploiting the depot's lack of a telegraph office, the raiders uncoupled the passenger cars, leaving three empty boxcars attached to the locomotive. Scott served on the demolition detachment charged with cutting lines and disabling track. While the hijacked train accelerated northward, Scott climbed telegraph poles along the right-of-way, severing communications to prevent warnings from preceding the locomotive, and assisted in lifting rails with iron bars to derail any pursuit.

The operation faced unexpected pursuit by conductor William Allen Fuller and Anthony Murphy, who gave chase on foot, by handcar, and eventually aboard the commandeered locomotive Texas, which pursued the General at high speed in reverse. Relentless rain prevented the raiders from setting fire to the wooden bridges across the Oostanaula River, while congested southbound freight traffic forced lengthy delays at sidings. Two miles north of Ringgold, Georgia, and eighteen miles short of Chattanooga, the General exhausted its wood and steam. Andrews ordered his men to jump into the woods and make their way back toward Union lines as individuals.

Confederate cavalry patrols and local militias saturated the countryside, capturing Scott near Ringgold within several days of the pursuit. Confederate authorities transferred Scott and his comrades to Chattanooga, confining them in the subterranean cellar of Swims Jail. Bound in heavy irons, starved, and subjected to harsh interrogations, the prisoners remained in the dungeon until Union artillery strikes on Chattanooga compelled their relocation to the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta in June 1862. A Confederate military court-martial convened to try twelve of the raiders as spies and unlawful combatants because they had carried out hostile acts behind Confederate lines dressed in civilian clothes. Seven soldiers, including Sergeant Scott, Marion A. Ross, Samuel Slavens, Samuel Robertson, Charles Perry Shadrach, and George D. Wilson, along with civilian William Campbell, were convicted and condemned to death.

On June 18, 1862, near Fair Street in Atlanta, Confederate guards brought the seven soldiers to the gallows, executing them in a mass hanging. Their bodies were placed in unmarked burial trenches near the Atlanta City Cemetery. Following the end of the Civil War, federal authorities disinterred the executed soldiers, reinterring them in Section H, Grave 11182, of Chattanooga National Cemetery, surrounding the national monument erected to honor Andrews' Raiders.

In recognition of their extraordinary bravery in penetrating deep into enemy-held territory to strike at Confederate supply lines, the War Department awarded the Medal of Honor to the non-commissioned officers and enlisted men who participated in the mission. On August 4, 1866, Scott was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, and his widow, Rachel, received it.

The complete official citation for Sergeant John Morehead Scott reads:

"One of the 19 of 22 men (including 2 civilians) who, by direction of Gen. Mitchell (or Buell), penetrated nearly 200 miles south into enemy territory and captured a railroad train at Big Shanty, Ga., and attempted to destroy the bridges and track between Chattanooga and Atlanta."